An orang-utan graveyard, Wilmar, and the addiction to dirty palm oil

This beautiful orang-utan sat just metres from me, serenely eating the fruit placed on the platform. It’s an incredible experience to see these creatures so close, and yet so at ease in their forest home. But this orang-utan represents an endangered species, and her forest home is under threat.

Until recently, this feeding station and the surrounding forest was part of a protected national park, but no longer. It is now owned by a palm oil company, Bumitama, that proudly boasts of its aggressive expansion plan, with 15,000ha pegged for new palm oil development this year – that’s nearly 60 football pitches per day!

But for now, this orang-utan is lucky.

An orang-utan graveyard

In August 2013, a Greenpeace International investigation with Friends of National Parks Foundation (FNPF) exposed a crime scene inside Bumitama’s new concession (PT ASMR) and just a few metres away from the oil palm plantation of PT BLP (part of BW Plantation). Here investigators documented an orang-utan skull.

Since March 2013, the remains of several orang-utans have been documented by Orangutan Foundation International (OFI) and FNPF in different locations along the border between the two palm oil concessions. In a letter to authorities requesting urgent intervention, the organisations describe the area as an orang-utan ‘graveyard’.

Police investigations are now in process and it is their responsibility to determine how these beautiful animals died and who is responsible.

Pending judgment by the authorities, it is disturbing that such horrific incidents have been revealed to have taken place in such close proximity to the concessions of two RSPO members – BW Plantation and Bumitama – without those companies making public statements of concern. Recent requests by Greenpeace and journalists for information about the status of the police investigation have failed to obtain a satisfactory answer from officials.

Tragically, Bumitama has been in the spotlight before. The operations of Bumitama’s PT Ladang Sawit Mas, a company whose concession covers nearly 6,500ha in West Kalimantan, came to public attention in early 2013 due to the release of dramatic images documenting the rescue by International Animal Rescue Indonesia (IAR-I) of four malnourished orang-utans.

Greenpeace believes that palm oil can be produced responsibly. Palm oil can – and must - make a genuine contribution to Indonesia’s development, rather than destroying the future for its people, its wildlife and the global climate on which we all depend. But leadership starts somewhere.

Just today, at the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil AGM in Indonesia, one of the world's biggest consumer goods companies, Unilever, announced steps to deal with deforestation. It joins Nestlé, which has already committed to a No Deforestation Policy. If we can make more consumer companies introduce similar policies, then we will be placing more and more pressure on the whole industry to clean up its act – including on players who dominate the palm oil industry.

Wilmar sits at the centre of a global web of corporations – stretching from irresponsible oil palm producers like Bumitama and BW Plantation to the companies behind household brands – that make us all, as consumers, unwitting accomplices in this destruction.

Wilmar trades more than a third of all palm oil traded internationally. It can transform the palm oil industry if it wants to. We challenge Wilmar to take up the leadership role that comes with its dominance of global palm oil supply. Wilmar must clean up its palm oil supply chain, and exclude all trade of palm oil products linked to forest and peatland destruction.

Wilmar needs to meet this challenge now. The orang-utans and tigers can’t wait much longer.

Wirendro Sumargo is a Forest Campaigner with Greenpeace Southeast Asia

This is outrages!!! How come we have to fight the whole time to save animals from extinction!! why can there not be a law that prohibit anyone from ju...

This is outrages!!! How come we have to fight the whole time to save animals from extinction!! why can there not be a law that prohibit anyone from just taking over animal (their) kingdom? why do we need coconut oil so badly that we must destroy their natural habitat and kill them to start up something like coconut oil plantations. surely there are other open plains and fields where that can be done without endangering the extinction of these beautiful animals??

I totally agree with you DbC, PALM oil is not necessary and the destruction it has caused is so mind boggling it is beyond my comprehension as to the ...

I totally agree with you DbC, PALM oil is not necessary and the destruction it has caused is so mind boggling it is beyond my comprehension as to the necessity to destroy so much wildlife.

Nothing but greed and disrespect for life can do such atrocities and the self inflicted ignorance of those who choose NOT to help their own mother earth and all her children. Selfish and useless people allow this destruction to continue and not even caring or concerned that they are destroying their own futures. God help us is all I can do and pray for and sign Petition's daily!